DETAILED ACTION
This Office action for U.S. Patent Application No. 19/321,331 is responsive to the Request for Continued Examination filed 23 April 2026, in reply to the Final Rejection of 27 March 2026 and the Advisory Action of 22 April 2026.
Claims 1, 2, 6, and 7 are pending.
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Continued Examination Under 37 C.F.R. § 1.114
A request for continued examination under 37 C.F.R. § 1.114, including the fee set forth in 37 C.F.R. § 1.17(e), was filed in this application after final rejection. Since this application is eligible for continued examination under 37 C.F.R. § 1.114, and the fee set forth in 37 C.F.R. § 1.17(e) has been timely paid, the finality of the previous Office action has been withdrawn pursuant to 37 C.F.R. § 1.114. Applicant's submission filed on 23 April 2026 has been entered.
Response to Arguments
Applicant’s arguments with respect to claim 1 have been considered but are moot because the new ground of rejection does not rely on any reference applied in the prior rejection of record for any teaching or matter specifically challenged in the argument. It is respectfully submitted that U.S. Patent No. 7,580,578 B1 (“Onno”) teaches the claimed variable size ratio.
Claim Rejections - 35 U.S.C. § 103
In the event the determination of the status of the application as subject to AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103 (or as subject to pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102 and 103) is incorrect, any correction of the statutory basis (i.e., changing from AIA to pre-AIA ) for the rejection will not be considered a new ground of rejection if the prior art relied upon, and the rationale supporting the rejection, would be the same under either status.
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. § 103 which forms the basis for all obviousness rejections set forth in this Office action:
A patent for a claimed invention may not be obtained, notwithstanding that the claimed invention is not identically disclosed as set forth in section 102, if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the claimed invention as a whole would have been obvious before the effective filing date of the claimed invention to a person having ordinary skill in the art to which the claimed invention pertains. Patentability shall not be negated by the manner in which the invention was made.
Claims 1, 2, 6, and 7 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. § 103 as being unpatentable over U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0170612 A1 (“Zhou”) in view of U.S. Patent No. 7,580,578 B1 (“Onno”).
Zhou, directed to a video codec, teaches with respect to claim 1 a method for processing an image, the method comprising:
receiving a bitstream for the image (Fig. 3, receiving input stream NAL);
obtaining a decoded image by decoding the bitstream (id., entropy decoding 212 and inverse transform and processing 304);
determining a mode for reconstructing the decoded image based on reconstruction-related information included in the bitstream (¶ 0024, control code); and
reconstructing the decoded image based on the mode (id., rotation and mirror 302 in decoding pipeline);
wherein the mode comprises a plurality of candidate modes including flipping, rotating[,] and a combination of the flipping and the rotating (Fig. 1, various rotate and mirror transforms),
wherein the reconstructing the decoded image comprises rearranging pixels in the decoded image (¶ 0029–31, Fig. 7; changing pixel addresses).
The claimed invention differs from Zhou in that the invention specifies performing the pixel rearrangement based on a calculated image size ratio. However, Onno, directed to image transcoding, teaches with respect to claim 1:
wherein the rearranging is performed by obtaining a first size of the decoded image before the rearranging and a second size of the decoded image after the rearranging, calculating a ratio of the first size to the second size[,] and using the ratio as a variable (16:12–41, width ratio IW:IW’ and height ratio IH:IH’ before and after geometric transformation)
It would have been obvious to one of ordinary skill in the art to modify Zhou to resize the images on demand or as needed as part of the geometric transformation, as taught by Onno, in order to accommodate display devices with reduced memory. Onno 15:42–43.
Regarding claim 2, Zhou in view of Onno teaches the method of claim 1, wherein whether to reconstruct the decoded images is determined based on the reconstruction-related information (Zhou ¶ 0026, reconstruction with or without the transform).
Regarding claim 6, Zhou in view of Onno teaches a method for processing an image, the method comprising:
encoding the image into a bitstream (Kuroki Fig. 13, image compressor 120b);
determining a mode for reconstructing a decoded image which is obtained by decoding the bitstream (Kuroki ¶ 0097, process mode; Zhou ¶ 0024, process code); and
encoding the mode based on reconstruction-related information into the bitstream (id.),
wherein the mode comprises a plurality of candidate modes including flipping, rotating[,] and a combination of the flipping and the rotating (Zhou Fig. 1, various rotate and mirror transforms),
wherein the reconstructing the decoded image comprises rearranging pixels in the decoded image (¶ 0029–31, Fig. 7; changing pixel addresses), and
wherein the rearranging is performed by obtaining a first size of the decoded image before the rearranging and a second size of the decoded image after the rearranging, calculating a ratio of the first size to the second size[,] and using the ratio as a variable (Onno 16:12–41, width ratio IW:IW’ and height ratio IH:IH’ before and after geometric transformation).
Regarding claim 7, Zhou in view of Kuroki teaches a method for transmitting a bitstream, the method comprising:
encoding the image into a bitstream (Kuroki Fig. 13, image compressor 120b);
determining a mode for reconstructing a decoded image which is obtained by decoding the bitstream (Kuroki ¶ 0097, process mode; Zhou ¶ 0024, process code); and
encoding the mode based on reconstruction-related information into the bitstream (id.); and
transmitting the bitstream (Kuroki ¶ 0007, mobile phone well known to transmit images captured by onboard digital camera),
wherein the mode comprises a plurality of candidate modes including flipping, rotating[,] and a combination of the flipping and the rotating (Zhou Fig. 1, various rotate and mirror transforms),
wherein the reconstructing the decoded image comprises rearranging pixels in the decoded image (¶ 0029–31, Fig. 7; changing pixel addresses), and
wherein the rearranging is performed by obtaining a first size of the decoded image before the rearranging and a second size of the decoded image after the rearranging, calculating a ratio of the first size to the second size[,] and using the ratio as a variable (Onno 16:12–41, width ratio IW:IW’ and height ratio IH:IH’ before and after geometric transformation).
Conclusion
The prior art made of record and not relied upon is considered pertinent to applicant's disclosure: US 2002/0097411 A1.
The following prior art was found using an Artificial Intelligence assisted search using an internal AI tool that uses the classification of the application under the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system, as well as from the specification, including the claims and abstract, of the application as contextual information. The documents are ranked from most to least relevant. Where possible, English-language equivalents are given, and redundant results within the same patent families are eliminated. See “New Artificial Intelligence Functionality in PE2E Search”, 1504 OG 359 (15 November 2022), “Automated Search Pilot Program”, 90 F.R. 48,161 (8 October 2025).
US 2013/0188690 A1
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/David N Werner/Primary Examiner, Art Unit 2487
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